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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Our Secret Tomato Planting Recipe

If you haven't already planted your tomatoes, the time to plant them should be just around the corner. We live in Zone 8 so our tomatoes have been in the ground for almost 2 months now. We have always grown some killer tomato plants both in Utah and here in Texas we credit our success to a simple concoction that we put into the hole along with our plant. I am going to let you in on our secret recipe. Let us know how it works for you.

Early Girl - Already have fruit on them

Into the hole where your tomato plant is going throw in:

Approximately:

1 Tb. Epsom Salt

1 to 2 Tums or Rolaids

1 Tb. Sugar

Better Boy - Planted 2 weeks after the Early Girls

I can't say that I have ever really know why I throw these three things into the hole with my tomatoes. I don't even remember where I learned this method from. It was something that I heard just as we were getting ready to plant our first garden together as a newly married couple. So I tried it and we had awesome tomato plants, so I have always done it since then. Well, I did a little research on why these three things might be beneficial to my tomatoes and this is what I learned.

Tums or Rolaids are good to boost the calcium in your soil. One of the things that is caused by a lack of calcium is blossom end rot. This can be remedied by not only giving your soil a calcium boost but by making sure your plants get adequate amounts of water because it is the water that carries the calcium throughout the plant.

Probably the most perplexing item on the list is sugar. From what I have read it seems that the sugar doesn't really act as a fertilizer for the plant itself but does nourish the beneficial microbes in the soil, enriching it, and providing a healthy environment for your plant to thrive in.

What I do know for certain is that we have always used this little secret and have always had very healthy tomato plants. So I am not gonna mess with a good thing.Give it a try and let us know if it makes a difference for you.

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Polyculture Garden Fall 2011

Our Provident Life

We are Jacob and Shaun-ta'. We have been married for 9 years and we have 4 children. Over the past several years we have become increasingly interested in becoming more self reliant and have a great desire to live more Providently. We love learning new skills and methods for doing things and imparting our new found knowledge and skills to others. We started this blog as a way to document our journey, share the things we are learning, and hopefully inspire other to strive to live a more provident life. This journey will be filled with much trial and error we know, because most of this stuff we are trying to learn ourselves. We welcome your comments, suggestions, and questions and hope our journey will help you on your way to living more providently too.